Informatic systems pervading our environment are going to proliferate. We have few rigorous models and tools for them. The von Neumann machine is no good for this; we need an abstract machine to underpin large distributed mobile interactive non-deterministic systems.

I propose the Bigraphs model for this purpose; I’m discussing it with people who study the design and sociology of these systems. This talk has two parts:

(1) A brief introduction to bigraphs, by example, followed by a summary of various categories (and the functors between them) whose arrows are bigraphs.

(2) An experimental representation of a game called the Savannah game invented by Steve Benford at Nottingham, in which children with laptops and GPSs pretend to be lions hunting wildebeast in the African Savannah.